A Deep Breath of Sky is not Augmented Reality (AR). I am not recreating reality; the audience can see this is not real, analogue space. I aim to create an abstract environment that can focus on specific elements of our relationship with the sky. Abstraction is a tool to explore reality. A Deep Breath of Sky is about our observation and connection with skies, both real and recorded. The environment itself and the objects within are abstract observations.
Immersion and Engagement
The images within the environment (sky-box) go through several transitions. The `gallery experience’ of looking at a horizontal image on a wall, the tall vertical landscapes where the viewer has to look up and the arched image which makes the viewer look up, over and around to see the whole. These images share the artist’s experience of looking at and recording skyscapes.
Curved landscape panoramas enclose the viewer and invade the peripheral vision prompting the viewer to move. If they move around the back of the image more landscapes become visible while earlier landscapes move out of sight. Movement is intrinsic to how we view landscapes in the real world at specific viewing points and in the transitions between.
The sky-box environment takes the arched panoramas further into a 720-degree dome. A painted image surrounds you; you are embraced within the unreal landscape.
How to choreograph the audience
So how do you manage the movement of the audience within space? Some images need specific movements – look up, look down, turn around but what about movement between the images? Should this be `heavy-handed’ management or light-handed? Where to start the experience? Should you leave it to the viewer or entice them with a breadcrumb trail to take a certain route?
Tools of choreography
Image placement becomes important – you can tease the viewer to move in a certain direction teasing with glimpses of an image or present it in a different form as a landscape or an arch.
Familiar beginnings – When you begin the journey you start with what they know and what feels familiar and `safe’ like the traditional entrance to a physical gallery. You can then lead them into the unfamiliar and let them explore the unknown.
Sound
I want to add a soundtrack – the idea of an overlay of ambient sound is interesting mixing shingle, waves and seagull calls.